Posts Tagged ‘motherboard’

Gigabyte has released a statement on the launch of a new flagship motherboard for the Intel P55 chipset platform, the GA-P55A-UD7. A DigiTimes report on the releases says the GA-P55A-UD7 will continue the tradition of the company’s UD7-series of “packing as many extra features on the board as it can find space for”.

Extra Extra!

In the case on the GA-P55A-UD7 value-added extras not seen on common P55-based boards include support for Nvidia 3-Way SLI. USB 3.0 with Power Boost, and SATA 6Gbpss, as well as a 24-phase power design to increase overclocking potential. Before we get into more of the details, DigiTimes asked the quite pertinent question of whether there really is logic behind adding so many extra features, which increase the selling price of the board, to what is essentially a mid-range platform (Intel has its X58 chipset for the high-end segment).

DigiTimes is reporting that the long-running rumours of AMD’s plans to launch three six-core desktop processors (codenamed Thuban) under its new Phenom II X6 1000T series will finally come to pass in May of this year, while Intel’s heavily mooted plans to launch its six-core desktop processors (codenamed Gulftown) are set to kick into gear at the end of March.

It’s war!

Citing “sources from motherboard makers”, the article claims that the three processors from AMD – the Phenom II X6 1075T, 1055T and 1035T – will each adopt a 45nm process. AMD will also launch the quad-core Phenom II X4 960T alongside the six-core models, the sources noted.

With the Intel Core 2 finding itself phased out late last year, the Core i3 – along with Core i7 and Core i5 – has been released to generally good reviews thus far. Considering how utterly successful the Core 2 processors were Intel has a lot of eyes focusing on their work this time around. However, as we sifted through some of the reviews out there of the i3 530 and 540 since their release a few weeks back, it became clear that Intel has met most expectations.

Early reports on Intel’s Core i3 capabilities have been positive

The two Core i3 models are dual-core, hyper-threading-equipped CPUs with 3MB shared L3 cache which is DDR3-1066-compatible. While most run-downs on the merits of the new range note that the Core i3 and Core i5 CPUs are “intended to be slower” than the i7, they are considerably cheaper to boot.

Good afternoon all, hopefully we find you well this rainy, suspiciously snowless Monday afternoon. It’s nice to see that the “much worse” that was “still to come” on Friday hasn’t quite materialised, leaving us with a pleasant (if somewhat rainy) week ahead of us.

As anyone who reads the blog regularly will know, we like to post the special offers for the coming week on a Monday afternoon; it gives everyone the longest possible time to consider a purchase while the price is knocked down, which is always nice :)

Anyway, without any more delay, this week our special offers are on RAM, an upgrade kit and a media player.

4GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600MHz

Corsair’s Dominator is a solid RAM kit, with a full 4GB (that’s on two 2GB sticks) that shouldn’t break the bank. Still, it’s not on the low end of the performance scale.

Click through to see our page for the Corsair Dominator 4GB kit :)

Considering the performance, it’s nice to see Corsair’s Dominator on special offer, with the price dropped by 7%. Of course, it’s not for everyone, with high-end memory there will always be those whose machines don’t support it. In this case, you’re going to want to make sure that your motherboard supports DDR3, but aside from that you should be good to go.

It’s also worth mentioning that whenever we do a PC build, one of the guys in RMA (whether Ryan or Shetlon) will always advise that we roll with Corsair RAM, since they’re a reliable company with a solid reputation when it comes to memory. It might seem like a relatively small thing when you’re considering performance and a multitude of other things in your build… but it can save headaches later.

Nvidia has launched a parody page called Intel’s Insides boasting cartoons about Intel’s current legal position, one with which it seems Intel is none-too-pleased.

Nvidia has responded to the awkward position that Intel has found itself in in the last week or so since it emerged that the company was to be brought to court by the New York Attorney General’s office over allegations of “threats and bribery” in its attempts to become the default choice for consumer processors. It’s been estimated that Dell alone has profited from Intel’s largess to the tune of $6 billion.

Good afternoon all, hopefully this week has been kind to you and you’ve had as good a weekend as we have. To those of you we met at the Irish Web Awards, it was excellent to meet you, especially those of you who got up and had a dance :)

For those of you who aren’t familiar, we do up a fairly simple blog post every Monday afternoon that basically outlines some of the products we have on special offer during the week. We do it on a Monday do you have the maximum amount of time to order it while the price is down, mull it over or convince the husband/wife that it’s a solid buy.

This week we’ve got a graphics card, a solid all ‘round upgrade kit and a case… between them you could build a fair machine with mot much else ;)

Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB:

Sapphire’s Radeon HD 4890 is a solid card, and we’ve got it down to €171.50, so it won’t break the bank. As usual, there are so many different areas people might be interested in when it comes to shopping for a graphics card that it doesn’t really make sense to just list off all of the specifications. If you’re interested in the HD 4890 then you should have a look at the product page for it.

Click through to see the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 in more detail :)

For those with an interest in some of the beefier points, it’ll support resolutions up to 2560 x 1600, which isn’t something to sneeze at. It’ll also support two monitors, for those with two displays (or who are looking to add one to an existing arrangement). It’s also won a host of awards, which is always nice to see for a product on sale.

Good afternoon all, you’ll have to excuse the lateness of this post. Normally we post our Special Offers for the week on a Monday afternoon so you guys have as long as possible to take a look through them and weigh up options before you decide whether or not you’d like to buy something that’s on offer, but I was sick yesterday.

Anyway, this week we have some fairly big items on offer, including a Panasonic Blu-Ray player and sound setup, an Antec 850W power supply and an MSi motherboard.

Panasonic SC-BT200EB-K Home Cinema:

This is a fairly unusual bundle, but it’s a solid deal for anyone looking to round out or build their own home theatre setup. At its core it’s a Panasonic Blu-Ray player and a full 5.1 surround sound setup. Moreover, it’s marked down 8% this week, so it’ll set you back just about €579.

Click through to see the product page for the Panasonic Home Cinema setup :)

Moreover, it’s the little things that make a setup like this worth the investment. Anyone who’s opted to go with Apple for their portable music player of choice will be pleased to see that there’s an iPod cradle built in, which facilitates those of us who’ve moved on from the world of CDs and onto portable media for all of our music. If you’re like us and like to keep up with the news while you’re working around the house, the built-in FM radio is a welcome addition.

When we ran our article on setting up your own file server, we ran with the assumption that most people would have an old PC lying around the house, not doing an awful lot, that could be recommissioned as a file server with only minor physical work.

Not all servers need to look quite this scary.

That said, we got a lot of feedback from people asking if we’d put together an article on what hardware we’d use to build a file server as cheaply as practically possible without compromising the machine itself. That’s all this article is going to be, a quick and dirty list of things we’d recommend for anyone building a file server for in their own home.

It’s important to remember when you see these spec that a file server, set up as we’d recommended before, running FreeNAS, shouldn’t necessarily need to be anything particularly powerful. All it needs to be is stable, reliable and (hopefully) cheap enough that you can add some networked storage to your house without breaking the bank.